Thank you, colleagues.
My amendment essentially sets a sunset clause on this change to the definition. It will set a sunset, the clock will start ticking once the act receives royal assent, and it will give a 10-year window, after which the original definition of “qualifying farming fuel” will then be reinstated.
This was my attempt to try to find some middle ground between witness testimony we heard from groups like Farmers for Climate Solutions, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute versus people on the other side of the spectrum, farmers who we heard from themselves, like Mr. Serge Buy from the Agri-food Innovation Council, who I think quite clearly said that with the technology out there, other options are simply not commercially viable at present. He did mention 10 years as a conservative estimate, so I think this gives a 10-year window, up to the year 2031 if we receive royal assent on this bill. In that 10-year period, given the increasing challenges that are going to be faced with climate change, if we haven't found solutions by 2031, I'm going to be quite concerned at the state of our country and indeed the whole world.
This is my attempt to find a middle ground, recognizing that there are no viable alternatives at present, but also starting a clock for the reinstatement of the original definition so that we're all working with a timeline in mind and there's a bit of impetus to try to get those commercially viable options available to farmers as quickly as possible.
There's a whole other suite of policy options that I hope will be adopted in the interim. There are interesting things that can be done in rewarding farmers for sequestering carbon, and so on. I'm sure there will be more federal investments in clean technology, more efficient dryers, and so on. I hope colleagues will find that this is a fairly reasonable time frame to put in place.
I'll stop there.